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Resilience of Road Infrastructure in Response to Extreme Weather Events

Conference Paper · October 2017

DOI: 10.1061/9780784481219.031

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 Resilience of Road Infrastructure in Response to Extreme Weather Events
Yvainne B. Valenzuela1, Raphael S. Rosas2,
Mehran Mazari, Ph.D.3, Mark Risse, Ph.D.4, and Tonatiuh Rodriguez-Nikl, Ph.D.5

1
California State University Los Angeles, Department of Civil Engineering, 5151 University
Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032; e-mail: yvalenz2@calstatela.edu
2
California State University Los Angeles, Department of Civil Engineering, 5151 University
Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032; e-mail: rrosas12@calstatela.edu
3
California State University Los Angeles, Department of Civil Engineering, 5151 University
Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032; e-mail: mmazari2@calstatela.edu
4
Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, University of Georgia, 1030 Chicopee Complex,
Athens, Georgia 30602; e-mail: mrisse@uga.edu
5
California State University Los Angeles, Department of Civil Engineering, 5151 University
Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032; e-mail: trodrig7@calstatela.edu

ABSTRACT

Transportation infrastructure, as a major component of urban infrastructure, plays an important

role in critical emergencies such as natural disasters and extreme events. The functional loss of
transportation facilities, mostly highway pavement structures, negatively impacts the disaster
management process and could significantly delay the evacuation and recovery process. Pavement
structures are the main components of road assets that need to be maintained, rehabilitated and
reconstructed. The performance of pavement structures can be significantly affected by
environmental factors. Therefore, evaluating the resilience of pavements during extreme events
and natural disasters is of major interest to highway agencies and coastal stakeholders.
Infrastructure resilience is an important contributor to its long term sustainability. This study
focused on the state of the practice concerning resilience of pavement structures during extreme
events. A decision making algorithm and risk assessment framework was evaluated to study the
resilience of highway and pavement systems in critical conditions. The results of this study could
further be expanded to the broader range of transportation infrastructure in response to the extreme
events in urban and rural areas.

INTRODUCTION

Global climate change affects the built infrastructure and more specifically road and transportation
systems. These impacts can be classified into three main groups (Schwartz et al. 2014):
precipitation, temperature, and sea level rise. Although all the above climate impacts are
considered potential risks to nation’s infrastructure, the sea level rise is the most dominant impact
for coastal regions. Projections of sea level rise for the next eighty years show a range of 0.8 to 6.5

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ft (Melillo, 2014). Furthermore, the risk of sea level rise coupled with storm surge and increased
precipitation will increase the vulnerability of coastal transportation infrastructure including
bridges, roads, ports and harbors. The U.S. Global Change Research Program warns of the impact
of climate change and extreme weather events on transportation infrastructure, highlighting the
risk due to sea level rise (Schwartz et al, 2014). They argue that climate change impacts will
impose additional costs on the nation’s transportation infrastructure and their users.
One of the most important components of our transportation infrastructure is the road
network. The pavement structure is the main element of road assets that need to be maintained,
rehabilitated and reconstructed. The performance of pavement is significantly affected by
environmental factors. Therefore, evaluating the performance of pavements during extreme
weather events is of major interest to highway agencies and coastal stakeholders. Although
resilience and sustainability are not the same (Rodriguez-Nikl 2016), ensuring the resilience of
transportation infrastructure is one important factor in making it sustainable over the long term.

Impact of Environment on Pavement Structures

The road pavement system continuously interacts with its environment. Different environmental
factors should be considered when designing pavement systems. The new Mechanistic Empirical
Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) incorporates the environmental factors as an Enhanced
Integrated Climate Model (EICM). The EICM simulates the impact of environmental conditions
on pavement characteristics and properties. The initial EICM was developed by the Federal
Highway Administration (FHWA) and was later implemented in the pavement design guide
(Witczak et al, 2004). It consists of three major components: infiltration and drainage, climatic-
materials-structural interaction, and frost heave and thaw settlement.
One of the most applicable components of EICM to the evaluation of pavement systems
and transportation infrastructure in coastal areas is the impact of moisture content. The design
guide for new pavement structures recommends the placement and compaction of pavement layers
at or near the optimum moisture conditions. The optimum moisture content of geomaterials occurs
at the maximum dry density in laboratory conditions. However, any variation in moisture content
from optimum conditions would lead to a lower dry density of compacted geomaterials. The
variation of moisture content in pavement materials are categorized as follows (Zapata and
Houston, 2008; Sotelo et al. 2014; Mazari et al. 2016): variation of moisture content from initial
or optimum value to the equilibrium condition, seasonal variation of moisture content that could
happen due to precipitation, flash storms, sea level rise and ground water table rise, and variation
of moisture content due to freeze/thaw cycles during cold seasons.
The primary reason to study the moisture variation in pavement systems is the effect of
moisture on the strength of pavement geomaterials in terms of resilient modulus (MR) and
stiffness. Increasing moisture content in compacted geomaterial layers results in reductions of MR
and stiffness. Excessive amounts of water in pavement structure could lead to reduced structural
performance and load bearing capacity of the pavement system (Nazarian et al. 2014; Mazari et
al. 2015). This scenario is more likely to happen during or after extreme weather events such as

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flash floods and storm surges. Evaluating the short term and long term structural capacity of
pavement structure during and after weather events could help decision makers decide when to
resume traffic on a flooded section of a highway. Furthermore, consideration of these fluctuations
during the design process could also improve the durability of pavement structure susceptible to
extreme weather events.
Water may enter pavement systems in different ways. Figure 1 illustrates the sources of
water intrusion into pavement layers. Extreme weather events can impact the proneness of
pavement layers, and more specifically subgrade soil layer, to the excessive water content. In
coastal regions, the ground water table is strongly affected by rising sea level. In some areas, the
pavement system can become fully inundated due to high tides and sea level rise. Structural
performance and load bearing capacity of pavement system is affected by reduced strength of
subgrade soil due to presence of water. However, these effects are not visible and may lead to the
failure of road infrastructure under traffic loads. Evaluating the structural performance of
pavements under flooded conditions could help in preventing structural failure.

Figure 1. Sources of water intrusion to the pavement structure (Christopher et al. 2006)

White et al. (2013) summarized flood damages to roadway systems based on the damage
reports and surveys of local Department of Transportation (DOT) engineers. They categorized the
overall damage into four major classes as paved roadways, bridges, culverts and unpaved
roadways. That study also provided a list of damage types for each major infrastructure
component. As an example, the damages to roadways included erosion of unpaved shoulders,
shallow and deep voids due to erosion of geomaterial layers, erosion of Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA)
and Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) surface layers for paved roads and rutting (permanent
deformation) of gravel unpaved roads under traffic wheel loads.
A flow chart of flooded roadway and geo-infrastructure assessment and evaluation
techniques was provided by White et al. (2013). The researchers provided damage detection and
repair options for both paved and unpaved roadways, bridge foundations and culverts. Such
guidelines could be developed for coastal communities which are at constant exposure to extreme

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weather events and flooding conditions. The local strategies should consider the available
technologies and evaluation techniques to assess the structural performance of transportation
infrastructure.
Another pilot study was developed for bridge and highway climate change and extreme
weather vulnerability assessment in the state of Iowa (Anderson et al. 2015). This pilot addressed
the vulnerability of highways and bridges to extreme precipitation and streamflow. It provided a
quantitative methodology to simulate streamflow statistics to be employed in damage prediction
for transportation infrastructure. The results of that study included the temporal and spatial
precision of climate data to be used in hydrologic simulations as well as assessing the accuracy
and sensitivity of simulation models. Furthermore, the location of critical road infrastructure,
including bridges and highways, were recorded to assess their vulnerability during flooding. The
climate projection data, which were simulated as a result of findings of that study, help the local
DOTs to protect the roadway infrastructure from future flooding and provide the adaptation plans.
The authors recommended that state DOTs should develop hydraulic guidelines to use historical
data combined with climate projections for the design of transportation infrastructure.
In 2007, Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LaDOTD) and
Louisiana Transportation Research Center (LTRC) published a research report summarizing the
impact of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita on roadway structures in New Orleans area. One
of the main objectives of that study was to evaluate the structural strength parameters such as
resilient modulus and structural number (SN) of different pavement layers before and after the
flooding event. However, the routine pavement management condition surveys and distress data
collection includes international roughness index (IRI), rutting and cracking. The research team
conducted structural damage testing on roads under construction to determine if they required any
additional reconstruction work. A number of testing devices were used, including Falling Weight
Deflectometer (FWD), Dynamic Cone Penetrometer (DCP). Researchers found that in most test
sections, the HMA and PCC pavements were damaged. Furthermore, the granular base layer and
subgrade soil layers were also weakened due to the presence of excessive moisture. A detailed
map of flooded areas was extracted from United States Geological Survey (USGS) and Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) database. The flood duration data were also determined
using the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) maps and databases.
The duration of submerged roads was identified and classified on the maps to evaluate the
structural performance of pavement layers. An extensive statistical analysis was then conducted to
evaluate the before and after scenarios in the flooded areas. The results of the statistical analyses
on flexible pavement data showed that there is a significant difference in the strength of thin
pavement sections before and after flooding that should be evaluated prior to the rehabilitation
work (Chen and Zhang, 2014).
Another important aspect of evaluating the vulnerability of transportation infrastructure
and assessing the adaptive strategies to extreme weather events is assessing the costs and benefits
of these strategies. The cost estimates, can be related to long-term investment and supporting the
strategic planning. However, the costs could be very dependent of the project specifications and

4
scale. On the other hand, the benefits could be translated in terms of negative impacts that are
avoided. These benefits could further include avoiding the costs of maintenance and repair to be
occurred at the system in case an extreme event. As a part of these efforts, FHWA provided a
vulnerability assessment framework and a benefit-cost analysis tool to help highway agencies and
transportation officials evaluating the resilience of their assets and estimating the costs and benefits
of adaptation strategies. The following sections provide a summary of FHWA tools.

FHWA’s Vulnerability Assessment Framework

FHWA initiated an international effort to address the vulnerability assessment of roadway

structure after flooding. The FHWA’s Flooded Pavement Assessment considers the following
objectives (FHWA, 2012): identify when emergency or other vehicles can safely be allowed on
roads of different types, and on different soils, that have been or are flooded to various degrees
(i.e. depths and durations); determine the best times to allow heavy maintenance equipment on the
roads (e.g. in terms of the tradeoff between the user costs of road closure versus costs of increased
road damage); determine the effects of floods on long term pavement performance; and develop
guidelines for use by highway agencies on how to assess flooded pavements for both short term
and long term impacts.
The study was performed in two phases. Phase I included an extensive review of methods,
equipment and instrumentation that could be used to evaluate the short- and long-term structural
capacity of flooded pavements. Phase II proposed procedures, methods and algorithms to evaluate
the conditions of pavement structures under flooding and inundation events. The analytical
procedures and the decision support system developed as a part of this study can help coastal
communities predict the optimum time to resume the transportation infrastructure operation and
the allowable traffic configuration in terms of axle loads after the flooding event (FHWA, 2012).
Figure 2 summarizes the FHWA framework for vulnerability assessment of transportation
infrastructure in response to extreme weather events and climate change. The framework includes
three principal steps: defining the scope, assessing the vulnerability and integrating results into
decision making. This approach provides an evaluation and decision support system that needs to
be calibrated for different coastal communities to consider local climate change events,
transportation infrastructure, and availability of evaluation methods and equipment, serving as a
baseline for coastal stakeholders, state departments of transportation and highway agencies.
The FHWA’s proposed framework recommends that local communities select and rank
their transportation assets, including non-transportation assets that could be related to the
performance of transportation infrastructure such as support facilities and roadside ecosystems.
The availability of data relevant to the selected assets should also be considered. The temporal and
spatial scopes of the study must be defined; adaptation plans could be at the scale of regional, local
and sector, based on the selected temporal scope. Selecting the most critical assets and old
infrastructure in a specific geographical area is the key to the success of adaptation and assessment
plans.

5
 Figure 2. Climate change vulnerability assessment framework (FHWA, 2012)

The tool provides a framework for an indicator-based vulnerability scoring approach, that
involves collecting information about projected climate change in the study area, considering
which characteristics of the selected assets make it more vulnerable to climate stressors known as
indicators, collecting data about the selected indicators, and considering how the data should
translate into a vulnerability score whether there are relevant thresholds and whether any indicators
are more or less important than others.
Figure 3 illustrates a timeline of activities to be undertaken for a vulnerability assessment
study developed by FHWA. This tool requires input from agency experts and local stakeholders,
which includes departments of transportation and state highway agencies as well as city and county
officials, and engineering, operation, management and planning experts.

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 Figure 3. Vulnerability assessment timeline (FHWA, 2015)

In this paper, results of a pilot vulnerability assessment study in the southern California
coastal region are presented. However, the discussion of data collection methods, data analyses
and vulnerability assessment processes are beyond the scope of this paper. The following sections
include the general information about the pilot study area and a brief summary of assessment
results. In this study, only two types of transportation assets were evaluated. These assets include
a section of a local road and a parking lot in the vicinity of the coastal area. It should be noted that
a more comprehensive data collection and analysis should be performed to study the impact of
different types of extreme weather conditions on local transportation infrastructure.
The area selected for this pilot study was located southeast of Los Angeles. Figure 4 shows
the map of the coastal flood zone in the study area based on the data from Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA). Most of the coastal area and the marina zone are affected by the
flood hazard. Figure 5 illustrates the impact of projected sea level rise on the infrastructure of the
study area based on the data provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA, 2016). This map reflects the low lying areas as well as predicted water depth under two
different scenarios. The first scenario (Figure 5a) shows the affected areas based on the current
mean higher high water level. Figure 5b shows the affected zones under a projected 6 ft sea level
rise. Most of the transportation infrastructure and residential areas within the study area will be
inundated in the projected sea level rise scenario. To further illustrate the vulnerability of the study
area, Figure 6 highlights the shallow coastal flooding zones extracted from NOAA database. Sea
level rise will cause flooding to occur more frequently and last for longer durations in these zones.
Most of the affected areas in this figure include the transportation infrastructure within the pilot
study zone.
Three types of weather events were considered as climate stressors in the vulnerability
assessment of transportation infrastructure. A climate stressor is defined as an external change in
climate that may cause damage to the transportation system. Sometimes referred to as climate
variables, these include precipitation changes, sea level rise, and severe storms.

7
 Figure 4. Map of coastal flood zone within the study area (FEMA, 2008)

a) b)
Figure 5. Visualization of sea level rise and coastal flooding impact a) current mean higher
high water, b) 6 ft sea level rise (NOAA, 2016)

Figure 6. Shallow coastal flooding zones within the study area (NOAA, 2016)

8
 Following the steps described in the FHWA vulnerability assessment tool, the exposure,
adaptive capacity and potential damages to two of transportation assets within the study area were
quantified. The adaptive capacity is defined as the ability of the system to manage the damage or
disruption to the asset under extreme conditions. In this study, a section of the pacific coast
highway (PCH) and a parking lot were selected to perform the pilot sensitivity analysis. The
summary of vulnerability scores for the section of the road infrastructure and the parking lot is
illustrated in Figure 7 under two scenarios denoted as less extreme and more extreme. The parking
lot, shown as the asset number 1, seems to be more vulnerable under the more extreme conditions
assuming the precipitation change scenario. However, there was not a significant difference
between the vulnerability score of the two assets when exposed to sea level rise and storm surge
scenarios.

Figure 7. Road infrastructure vulnerability assessment summary

Figure 8 further illustrates the vulnerability scores for two pavement systems, asphalt and
concrete, under different extreme weather conditions. Asset number 1, which represents a section
of an infrastructure with asphalt pavement, shows moderate to high vulnerability compared to the
concrete pavement section. It should be noted that these results are based on a limited data and a
number of assumptions to simplify the process in the pilot study. A more robust analysis of climate
data along with the details of different pavement structures are needed to extend the results to other
types of infrastructure.

Figure 8. Pavement systems vulnerability assessment summary

9
 Figure 9 illustrates the vulnerability of each asset to extreme precipitation in terms of
predicted damage versus adaptive capacity. Such analysis was performed under less extreme and
extreme weather conditions as defined in this pilot study. The upper right corner of the graph
represents higher damage and lower adaptive capacity. The results of the pilot vulnerability
assessment for the highway section and parking lot shows that under less extreme weather
conditions, the road structure tolerates less damage compared to the parking lot while both of them
will show almost the same adaptive capacity. However, under extreme conditions, both assets will
endure a higher level of damage while maintaining the same level of adaptive capacity. Adaptive
capacity has an inverse correlation with vulnerability. An asset with a low adaptive capacity shows
higher vulnerability compared to an asset with higher adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity scores
are highly correlated with vulnerability. The lower the adaptive capacity, the higher the adaptive
capacity score and the higher the vulnerability score.

a) b)

Figure 9. Vulnerability to extreme precipitation in terms of damage vs. adaptive capacity a)

less extreme weather conditions and b) extreme weather conditions

CONCLUSIONS

There is no question that transportation infrastructure is constantly exposed to the extreme weather
events and it is likely that these events will become more severe with climate change. These events
include sea level rise, high tides, flash floods and storms. The vulnerability of transportation
systems is critical in the context of post-hazard management, emergency preparedness and
maintenance procedures. The resilience of a coastal community not only depends on planning, but
also relies on education and hazard mitigation actions. The inundation of road and highway
systems is a common consequence of extreme weather events that might lead to temporary or long-
term closure of the road. This problem is of major interest for departments of transportation and
state highway agencies as well as city and county stakeholders. A flooded road could be a major
hazard for emergency vehicles and in some cases may alter evacuation routes. Due to the presence
of excessive water in the pavement foundation layers, the bearing capacity of these layers may
decline and could cause sudden collapse of a section of a road. Moreover, opening the road to the
traffic after major inundation could increase the severity of distresses and may increase the cost of
rehabilitation and maintenance. A rational process is necessary to assess the vulnerability of the
road systems during major weather events. The vulnerability assessment framework developed by

10
Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is a basic tool to evaluate the performance of
transportation infrastructure in case of flooding and other climate change conditions. This pilot
study showed how that framework could be adapted by local communities in coastal regions to
assess the adaptive capacity and potential damages of road infrastructure during various climate
change scenarios.

AKNOWLEDGMENT

This study was supported by a Georgia Sea Grant program-development grant and Nabih Yousef
scholarship program. The contents of this paper reflect the authors’ opinions, not necessarily the
policies and findings of Georgia Sea Grant. The authors are grateful to the study panel and
scholarship provider for their help and advice throughout this study.

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